The Bulgari Connection (7 page)

He could almost hear Grace's voice saying, ‘What do you mean, when the house is finished? It was finished in 1865.' Doris was right, Grace could be as bitchy as the rest of them. Now Doris's hand was roving, her fingers tugging ever so gently at the hairs on his chest. She gave each of his nipples a quick kiss. Grace never paid him this sort of attention in the morning.

‘Of course I didn't fancy him,' said Doris. ‘Why, do you want me to? Are you after a threesome? You, me and him. One has to be careful in case the press gets a hint, of course, but if that's what you want.'

Barley was shocked.

‘Of course that's not what I want,' he said.

‘I was only teasing, darling,' she was quick to reply. ‘Some men do like that kind of thing, you'd be surprised.'

‘Two girls and one man,' said Barley, ‘I can see the point of that, but why would any man want another man?'

‘If he truly loved his wife he might,' said Doris. ‘If for example he was rather old and she was rather young and he couldn't satisfy her but still wanted to be involved. Why then he might make the sacrifice.'

‘You're not suggesting,' said Barley, who had, he supposed satisfied his new wife twice that night already, ‘that this applies to me?'

Doris laughed merrily, and tugged his chest hair some more. It was going a little grey and wiry.

‘If there was the slightest suggestion of that,' she said, sounding quite offended, ‘I would hardly have brought the subject up. I don't suppose I'd even be with you. Don't worry about it, you're better than most men of your age.'

Some questions, Barley had learned, it is better not to ask, in case you don't like the reply. Doris had of her own declaration slept with her boss on several occasions but that had only, she assured him, been to get her own programme. And when she had been a student there had been several forays into experiment with other students but that was only to be expected these days. He thought he would probably kill anyone she dared look at now. Grace had last been seen leaving the Sir Ronalds' with the painting plus the artist in an old van: so Ross the chauffeur had heard on the grapevine. Barley had not told Doris that; it would complicate his life too much.

He doubted he'd ever get to be Sir Barley now, not after the episode of Grace in the car park. But you never knew. The public had short memories; think of the Prince and Camilla.

‘But darling,' Doris said now, her hand wandering down and patting his tummy, ‘I do think we have to work a little harder at the gym to get the extra pound or so off. Nothing that ages a man so much as a beer belly.'

This was ridiculous; Barley had no beer belly. A beer belly was when you looked down and couldn't see your knees, and he was nowhere near as bad as that. He could perfectly well see his knees when he looked down: he was sure it was more than Sir Ronald could do, and certainly more than Billyboy Justice could. He wondered if he should move over into arms de-commissioning rather than property: but it was dangerous work, not just because of explosions, look at what had happened to Billyboy's face, but people in the field did tend to get folded into the trunks of cars, dead. He would stick to the world-wide-web, as his gesture towards global peace and understanding.

‘I love you, darling,' said Doris Dubois, firmly replacing his hand, as it strayed, ‘no matter what shape or size you are. It is you I adore, the one and only Barley Salt in all the world. Now if you're too bashful to make Lady Juliet a straight offer on her necklace, can we please stroll down to Bulgari tomorrow and see about them making me up one just like hers.'

‘I don't think they'd do that, darling,' said Barley. ‘I think they may have rules about exclusivity in commissioned work, things like that.'

‘You're just too mean to buy it for me, darling. You're trying to get out of it.'

Well, she was right about that.

‘In six months' time, Doris. If you can hang on for six months.'

‘Anything can happen in six months,' she complained. ‘The whole world can change.'

She was right about that too, but neither of them knew it at the time.

‘I want that same young artist to paint me,' said Doris, ‘If Sir Ronald can do that for his horrid Juliet, surely you can do it for me.'

‘Yes, but Doris,' said Barley, ‘you did say we couldn't have a traditional portrait in the new style Wild Oats.' ‘Yes
but
,' complained Doris, ‘how you do
yes but
me all the time. We'll make a concession and have just one room with a picture rail. The library, I think. Of course that means redoing the floors for an antique effect, and probably replacing the panelling, which will have to be restored because they made rather a mess of it taking it out, but it will be worth it.'

Her hand moved downwards. He gasped with pleasure. ‘I don't want you to have a necklace too like Lady Juliet's,' he said. ‘And I don't want a portrait too like hers, either. Does it have to be by what was his name, Walter Wells? Really I would prefer it if it wasn't.' The hand retreated.

‘What is this apparently peculiar business going on between you and Sir Ronald and the man with the odd name? Contracts and ministries and backhanders and all that?' She was keeping this one in reserve. He sighed. It was terrible how transparent others could be in their attempts to manipulate, and even more terrible how you simply accepted it, as you grew older and women grew younger.

‘Doris,' said Barley Salt, as evenly as he could, ‘there is no peculiar business going on. Everything is perfectly legal and above board with proper bills of sale approved by the Department of Trade. What makes you think otherwise?' ‘Darling,' said Doris Dubois, patiently, ‘there is always something going on. There are always other agendas. How else does the world go round? I'm not objecting, only remarking. I do have links with the environmental lobby, obviously. Good Lord, I even shared a bed with Dicey Railton for a couple of years. That was before he came out as gay, of course. Actually I always thought that was an affectation to help his political career. There was certainly no sign of it at the time. He was totally a completely charming and fantastic lover.'

This was the first Barley had heard of a relationship with Dicey Railton, who was a backbench MP, an embarrassment to the Government by virtue of the awkward questions he was so good at asking, especially when it came to matters of the arms trade and sanction breaking.

‘I'd rather you weren't too close to Dicey Railton, Doris,' he said. ‘You are my wife. We don't want the papers getting hold of it and nor do you.'

‘True enough,' she said, regretfully. ‘But this much is for sure, I don't intend doing Lady Juliet any favours. Not after she made me take my dress off and sell it. Does she hate me? Why did she ask your ex-wife to the same function as she asked us? Whose side is she on anyway?'

‘I don't suppose you answered her invitation,' said Barley. ‘And I wish you wouldn't think about it as a question of sides. This was meant to be a civilised divorce.'

‘I never accept invitations,' said Doris, loftily. ‘I just turn up or I don't. How does your ex-wife have the nerve to go out looking the way she does? Did she ever look in mirrors when she was with you? Or perhaps she found it in some charity shop. A charity dress for a charity auction, that's the way her mind would work. Poor darling, how you must have suffered. And you know she was famous through London for serving prawn cocktails?'

‘What's wrong with a prawn cocktail?' He was baffled. She laughed, her little high perfected trill. He adored it. ‘Sweetheart, if you don't know I shan't tell you. Just leave it all to me and you'll have your knighthood in no time at all. It's absurd that Juliet gets to be a lady and I don't.'

There was a knock on the door. Barley had thought he had another half hour in bed with Doris, but it was the housekeeper to say the decorators had turned up and wanted to come in and measure up; and to his astonishment Doris got straight out of bed and let them in, not wanting to inconvenience them, she said.

Decaff coffee was served on the terrace, with grapefruit juice, which was rather acid for his stomach but he didn't like to say so, and low cholesterol croissants.

Walter Wells tells me he loves me. Walter Wells is much younger than I am. His body has a resilience mine does not. He bounds up the stairs to the studio we have shared for seven days; I go up them one at a time. He took me swimming to the local pool; he carves like a fish through the water; it parts only reluctantly for me. His body above mine is dark and sharply silhouetted as it moves with focused intent back and forth, back and forth. Mine is happy enough to receive this steady pounding, endless engine of desire, but feels surprised as if receiving what was not quite intended. I'm sure I never felt like this with Barley, who was always in rather a hurry, there was so much to be got on with. I can see that, though worldly wise I am really quite short of carnal knowledge: I daresay there are as many kinds of lovemaking as there are men. Who could I ask? If Ethel ever comes out of prison it is the kind of thing she might know. Walter Wells is still quite new to me; I am not quite sure yet what I can say or what I can't.

He smells of oil-paint and canvas, encrusted palettes and turpentine, cigarettes and McDonald's, where he eats Chicken McNuggets with the sweet-and-sour dip, and of chlorine from the swimming pool, and there is some slight remembered flavour of Carmichael there when I held him against my breast, the smell of the baby boy pre-testosterone, don't ask me why. I love it all. All I regret is the decades without it, and if I had not been without it how could I have it now? Those in love are bats, quite bats.

Walter Wells's full name is Walter Winston Wells. www. We see some significance in this when really there is none, but then we see significance in everything. We suppose him to be a man of the future, and he laments that he can never catch up with me. He looks forward to being old, or so he says, to be able to turn into his father and be taken seriously. I tell him I think it is unlucky to wish old age upon himself, and he points out that it's a lot better than death. Both of us at the moment want to live forever and together.

The Indian summer is over and the nights draw in. It is cold in the studio so I wear winter woollies. Lady Juliet's painting has her face to the wall, in case she gets damaged, leaning up against a stack of canvases, mostly landscapes, a couple of still lifes. She is waiting merely for a wall space to become vacant. She can go up only when the next one is sold, he says. It would seem like favouritism, he says, to take down one already in place and so make way for Lady Juliet. Everything must take its turn, be done in due order. He has a very personal relationship with his paintings. If I were a different, younger, less patient person I could get quite jealous of them, he is so tender and thoughtful to them. I wonder if I should take the painting back to my flat and put it up, but we agree we like Lady Juliet and do not want her hanging there lonely in that desolate place. I have to go back sometimes for a change of clothes and a better bath than Walter can provide and to answer lawyers' letters and so forth, but I am always pleased to leave. It seems to me that every time I climb the four flights to the studio I do it more quickly and more easily. My feet have wings.

Walter reckons it will be only a couple of weeks before he sells a painting and Lady Juliet goes on the wall. He sells his paintings for less than a thousand pounds each. He has a gallery in Bloomsbury just round the corner from my mansion flat in Tavington Court, not far from the British Museum – coincidence! Coincidence! See how God has arranged everything for our benefit.

It is a feature of new love that the senses grow sharper, the eye grows brighter – even my poor tired ones, in their sixth decade of being, and all things have meaning. I did the Lottery and won £92. I suppose we are ‘in love'. The public pool is more full of event and far more full of chlorine than my own ever was. Now Doris Dubois has doubled the size of the one at the Manor House, as Ross, Barley's chauffeur, tells me she has, it will be lonelier still. Good. But I hardly think of Doris Dubois these days and of Barley even less. Hate is minimally more powerful than love, it seems, certainly harder to lose from the system, or perhaps I never loved Barley; all he ever was, was habit.

I love Walter Winston Wells, [email protected]. The only cure for one man, as Ross pointed out, is another man. I met Ross by accident down at the swimming pool where Walter dove and I paddled. Ross was always an ally of mine: he knew what Barley could be like. Ross goes swimming to lose weight, and then goes straight to Kentucky Fries for a triple cheeseburger and baked potato with sour cream and chives. He reckons the sour cream is less fattening than butter. Ross believes what he wants to believe, and who doesn't? He's a great strong white-haired man with a loose jaw and big teeth, who used to be a security guard, and is now trained by Mercedes to get out of ambushes fast. Property is not the safest business in the world once you get to the top, especially now the Moscow Mafia have moved in. No such worries with Walter: I get on a bus.

Walter Winston Wells, www, was having trouble with his telephone bill, his rent, his council tax, the bill to his paint supplier – titanium white is a shocking price – and I paid them all. Good Lord, why should a man of talent be so burdened? He sells his paintings for between £500 and £900 – except for Lady Juliet which went for £20,000 – more like its true worth – and of course he didn't get a penny of that, Little Children, Everywhere, got it – unless the Randoms' embezzled it, which I don't suppose they did – and the Bloomsday Gallery takes sixty per cent and he is meant to give them everything he paints, because they once paid £400 of accumulated bills and he signed this wretched document. But of course he puts some aside and sells them privately. How else is he supposed to live? The Bloomsday is quite small and unfashionable, and Larry and Tommy who run it are weasly little creatures who speak through their noses and put VAT on the selling price including commission, so Walter has to pay more than his fair share. At least I think this is how it works – I can't quite get my head round it.